


Dynamo

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Angst, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-17
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-29 15:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/688623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If colored light can strafe the sky in two worlds not quite alike, perhaps anything <i>is</i> possible.</p><p>[Major <b>spoilers</b> for '03/Shamballa.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dynamo

**Author's Note:**

> This is far from a masterpiece, but writing it kind of kept me sane, which is the entire point of fanfic for me. ^^; It's also shoddily edited, because I have a headache and a 50,000-word Big Bang to fix up in a zillion ways! XD
> 
> Enjoy, if at all possible; and thank you for reading! ♥

When his desk phone rings, he lifts the receiver to his right ear so that the patch won’t rustle against the mouthpiece. “Mustang.”

“It’s—” The woman hesitates. “Edward Elric for you, sir.”

_No._

_It’s not._

_How_ dare _you—_

“He… his identification code—I mean, it’s… it’s correct, sir; he—”

It’s not him.

It’s not _him_ , and Roy is going to _incinerate_ whoever is responsible for the writhing of his insides and the skewer through his heart.

“Put it through,” he says.

“Yes, sir.”

The line clicks, skittering with static. Someone clears their throat.

“Colonel?” the voice—not the voice—not _quite_ the voice—says slowly.

“Brigadier General,” Roy says.

The laugh that rings tinnily in his ear is slightly lower and raspier than the one he remembers, but it’s—it’s _almost_ —

“Fuck you, bastard,” the voice says. “It’s good to hear you, too.”

It _is_ him.

Roy swallows. “How in the name of _all_ that is holy did you—”

“It’s complicated,” Edward says. “Look, the, uh—the phones are kinda crap up here, uh—”

How embarrassing that he didn’t think to ask: “Where _are_ you?”

“Place called Pazakov,” Edward says. “Population of twenty, counting the goats. There was just this huge blizzard, right, which we… might… have… had something to do with, and the dinky little rail line to North City is out. I thought—” For the first time in this wild, wildly _impossible_ conversation, for the first time since Roy started gripping the telephone so hard his knuckles ache, Edward pauses. “Well, Al was saying you might be willing to make a couple calls and maybe get a car sent up from the city contingent, and… well, I mean, otherwise, we’ll be stuck here ’til the thaw, and I’m gonna have no choice except to figure out cloud alchemy or something. It can’t be _too_ hard.”

“I’ll have a car sent,” Roy says. “Please don’t do anything untoward to the climate of the country in the meantime.”

This laugh is sharper—abrupt, breathless. “I could write a report. Y’know, for old times’ sake.”

“Just stay where you are,” Roy says. _Just stay_ here _, how in God’s name did you make it back? What were you doing? What were you thinking? What did you pay? And how,_ how _, can I be sure that this time you’re here forever?_ “Is—Alphonse—?”

There is a brief silence, and then Edward scoffs so loudly that the line spits static into Roy’s ear.

“ _Duh_ , Al’s here,” Edward says. “Like I’d come back from another fucking universe _without_ him. Anyway, fine, fine, whatever, just… we’ll wait. Thanks.”

 _You’ll ‘wait’,_ Roy thinks. _My dear boy, my dearest boy, you have no_ concept _of waiting._

“Certainly,” Roy says. “I imagine you don’t have currency? I’ll make sure the military reimburses any citizen who puts you up.”

“Damn,” Edward says, and Roy can hear the narrow, slanted grin; he can feel its edge pressing in against his own throat. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d accidentally learned how to get shit done.”

“How fortunate that you’re not fooled,” Roy says.

Ed laughs again. It’s startling. It’s strange. Roy’s fingers tighten around the receiver; if he hangs up, that laughter will _stop_.

“All right,” Edward says. “See you in a couple days, I guess. Don’t work too hard.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Roy says.

“Uh huh. Well, g’bye.”

“Goodbye, Edward.” Is there blood in his mouth? Those two words _cut_ coming up.

“For now,” Ed says. “Oh, and this is a collect call. ’Bye!”

The line goes dead. Roy manages not to follow.

 

* * *

 

He lets the phone ring once, twisting his fingers so tightly together that his knuckles pop.

He snatches the receiver halfway into the second trill.  “Mustang.”

“Lieutenant Ross for you, sir.”

“Put her through.”

“Yes, sir.”

Static.  Static is the sound that snow should make; instead it comes on so _quiet_ until it’s frozen your tongue in your mouth.

“Brigadier General?”

“I’m here.”

“Reporting on the Elrics as you requested, sir.”

“Go ahead, Lieutenant.”

“They’re reasonably healthy—both a little bit too thin for my liking; you can see their cheekbones, but they don’t seem to be much worse for the wear.  Unusual clothing, like the last time.  Al’s cut his hair.  And he’s gotten really—” She lowers her voice almost to a whisper.  “— _tall_.”

Does that rankle, with Ed?  Or is it different now?  Is _he_ different now?  He looked like a shadow, moved like a wraith, smiled without showing his teeth—his eyes were darker, his shoulders were broader, his hair was longer; his soul was older, and his heart was heavy, and there was something weary in the way he held himself.

(Wasn’t there?  Or was Roy extrapolating a wisp of real indecision into two years of imagined pain because he knew even then that an Ed who was _whole_ wouldn’t want him?)

A whistle shrills beneath the sound of the static and a ripple that might be wind.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Roy says.  “The circumstances are so extraordinary that I thought it most prudent to…”

“Be sure it was really them?” Ross asks with a smile in her voice.  “You don’t have to explain yourself to me, sir; I would have done the same.”

“Safe journey, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Someone starts to say _“Come on”_ in the background just as she hangs up the phone.  Roy strains to hear but can’t identify the voice.

He sets the phone back in the cradle and folds his hands.  He knows that he’s changed—he’s a different man than he was then; he’s a different man this year than he was the last; he’s virtually unrecognizable to anyone expecting the cocky young colonel who walked into a wall of flames and earned the white scars that make trenches on the backs of his hands.  He knows he can’t anticipate that Ed will be the same—he can’t anticipate that any _facet_ of Ed will be the same.  And that’s… unsettling.  That raises a question he’s not sure he’s ready for the answer to.

Exactly who is going to step off of that train?

 

* * *

 

“You look like a pirate,” Ed says the instant he steps into the office.

Roy clenches his hands tighter—slowly, fractionally, so subtly that only Riza will notice, if she cares to look.  “I don’t imagine,” he says, “that my physical deformity—”

“Whoa, whoa,” Ed says.  “I didn’t say ‘deformity’.  Jesus.”

Roy raises his voice over the nonsense.  “—is more important than the fact that this is your _only_ opportunity to avoid facing a military tribunal.  I suggest you treat it with appropriate solemnity.”

“C’mon,” Ed says, grinning.  “When have I ever not taken shit seriously?”

“Don’t be a smartass, Brother,” Alphonse says calmly.

“Can’t help it,” Ed says, but the smug expression falls away.  “Look, Mustang, I know what’s at stake.  I know a lot more now than I did—about people, and about people in power.  We can handle it.  Trust me on this one.”

_The last time I trusted you to ‘handle it’, you fled back to another universe.  The time before that, you died._

“Lieutenant Ross will see you to your room in the barracks,” Roy says, inclining his head slightly to acknowledge her sharp salute.  “I am obligated to post a guard over persons of interest; anything you require between now and noon tomorrow will be provided for.  Rest up.”  He looks at them both— _really_ looks, the way he fears to let himself, the way he fears will topple him.  Alphonse blinks calm gray-brown eyes, and Ed looks directly back: fierce, but not defiant.  “And use the time,” Roy says, “to get your story straight.”

Ed smirks.  “Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed,” Roy says.

Lieutenant Ross ushers them out, and Riza turns to Roy.

“Sir?” she asks, which means _Are you all right?_

“I should have expected that they would crash back into my life eventually,” he says.  “And that they would open up all the old wounds on impact.”

Riza pauses.  “Will those wounds heal, sir?”

“They’ll have to,” Roy says.

 

* * *

 

Brigadier General Talia Parish piques Roy’s nerves—underneath the surface, she’s so ruthless her blood must run cold, but when she smiles she could charm water from a stone; she is, perhaps, his strongest competition for the Führership.  Scarier still, she might well make a _better_ leader, which would effectively render his whole existence moot.

He folds his hands on the table.  Talia is at his left—she made the selection look perfectly natural, but he knows she chose the seat in his blind spot entirely deliberately—and a very nervous young man from Investigations who will be taking minutes sits to his right.  Immediately after receiving that first phone call, Roy made sure that Fuery would be out in the field today; he doesn’t want this encounter recorded.  He doesn’t want the tone of his voice when he is faced with _Ed_ , in all of the boy’s wretched impossibility, to be preserved and presented for later scrutiny.  He doesn’t trust his tongue not to betray him.

He expected Ed to slouch in the chair he occupies across the table from Roy—within an arm’s length, and so far away—but the elder Elric is upright and alert.  His eyes are so much older than they used to be, and so much older than the rest of his face.  Caution is a learned habit; children are fearless, but Ed is not a child anymore.

Next door, Major General Hakuro will be settling next to Riza, opposite Alphonse.  Roy has no choice but to believe that the two of them can take him.

He clears his throat, opens his pocket-watch, and turns to the scribe.

“Interview of Edward Elric,” he says, “commencing Tuesday, November twenty-ninth, 1919, at oh-nine-oh-two.  Present: Brigadier Generals T. Parish and R. Mustang; Corporal L. Kerwich; Major E. Elric, State Alchemist, heretofore missing and presumed dead.”

Ed opens his mouth and then snaps it shut, and Roy hears his own voice echoing in both their heads— _I always knew you were alive._

“To business,” Roy says as Liam Kerwich’s pen scratches across the page. “Major Elric, precisely where were you, and precisely how did you return?”

Ed takes a deep breath; as he sighs it out, his hair dances around his eyes. “I… this is complicated. Okay? Bear with me.”

“We’re not going anywhere, Major Elric,” Roy says.

Ed makes a face at him. Liam’s pen pauses, apparently in bewilderment as to how he should convey wordless communications.

“There’s a Gate,” Ed says, and his voice is flat and composed, but something in Roy’s spine prickles. “You only ever see it if you do really, really big alchemy—the kind of stuff you probably shouldn’t be doing in the first place. And on the other side of it, there’s a place a lot like this one.” He crosses his arms over his chest and frowns at the table thoughtfully. “It’s… it’s all the equal and opposite forces to our world, I guess. It’s not a mirror image as much as it’s a… complement. A lot of things are different, but the people are still _people_ , so a lot of it’s the same. Anyway, even if you do alchemy you shouldn’t be doing, you don’t always go _through_ and get there—or, y’know, go through and come _back_. Especially because they don’t even have alchemy there; it doesn’t work unless you have a connecting… well, that’s complicated, too. So we—me and Al, I mean—we were stuck there, basically, once we got there. But after a while we realized…” He runs his tongue over his teeth, curls his hands a little tighter around his own arms, and darts a glance at Roy. “They’re… about to have a really big war. Bigger than the last one they had, and that was… I mean, they called it a _World War_ ; it was fuc—uh, sorry. It was gigantic. It decimated their population, and it ruined all kinds of stuff, but some of the people who got ruined the most want a second go at it to see if they come out on top this time. They just don’t…” He scrubs the heel of his left hand at his face. “Never mind.”

Roy waits, but when a moment passes and nothing is forthcoming, he prompts, “So it occurred to you that there was going to be a war.”

Ed smiles humorlessly; the expression is unsettling on him. “It _occurred to us_ , yeah. And we thought, ‘Okay, no time like the present to see if we can get out of here before we get drafted.’”

“How,” Roy asks, “did you proceed to ‘get out of there’?”

“It’s the lights,” Ed says.

Silence reigns for a long moment. Ed blinks.

“The… lights,” Roy says.

“Yeah,” Ed says. “The… the lights up north. _The_ lights. You know—you must know; Al said you were up there for ages. On the other side they call ’em _auroras_ ; I dunno if we have a name here, but we should. They’re all—photons and magnetism and electricity, is the thing. Have you seen ’em?”

“Yes,” Roy says.

Ed hesitates for a moment and then plows onward when Roy doesn’t elaborate. “Well—yeah. Then you know they’re _intense_. So when Al and I heard about that, heard about all of that— _energy_ —just pouring into the thermosphere, we thought… well, we thought ‘What if we can harness that? What if we can ride that home?’”

“Ordinarily,” Talia says, and Roy tightens his folded hands to stop himself from jolting in surprise; “thinking about something and actually doing it are two entirely different matters.”

Ed stares at her for a moment, and then he unfurls a slow, slow, dangerous grin. “Have you _read_ my file, sir?”

Talia’s eyes narrow, but she says nothing.

“Major Elric,” Roy says, “I believe what Brigadier General Parish is asking is that you explain your methods.”

Ed stretches both arms over his head, tugging on his left wrist with his right hand. “No point. Alchemy is real particular over there—I mean, far as I can tell, only people _from here_ can do it, and let’s be honest; Al’n I are fucking talented. Pretty much nobody is capable of cooking up the kind of stuff we did, and _definitely_ nobody is ever going to be dumb enough to actually _try_ it. We took a leap of faith from way out on a limb, okay? Nothin’ to lose, and anybody with their head screwed on straight would’ve thought we were crazy for even thinking about it. But—y’know. That’s sort of how we are. It’s how we always have been. Long story short, we did stuff nobody’s done before that nobody would do again, and we slingshotted ourselves straight back through that Gate I told you about. Honestly, I still can’t believe it worked, either. If I wake up in a snowbank in Finland tomorrow, I’m not gonna be surprised.”

 _Don’t you dare,_ Roy thinks. _Don’t you_ dare _vanish now; don’t you_ dare _let me be dreaming._

“The thing is,” Ed says slowly, staring at the tabletop, “you… don’t want me to draw you the array. You don’t. Because you don’t want that shit in the hands of anybody— _anybody_ —who hasn’t gone through the stuff we have. Anybody who doesn’t know what it can do, and what that _means_. Anybody who doesn’t know the cost in all the ways you pay it.”

Suddenly he goes very still and looks very old.

“If you believe nothing else today,” he says, “believe that. Let that go. It’ll wear out of the snow, and Al and I are never going to breathe a goddamn word. If you let it go, it dies, and that’s the best thing for everyone.”

He glances up at them, and the shift of the angle of his hips and his shoulders is _subtle_ , but it marks an about-face in his attitude.

“So,” he says. “If I’m still enlisted, where do I get the forms to quit?”

 

* * *

 

Spending most of a weekday in an interrogation room does little to decrease the monumental stack of paperwork looming upon one’s desk. Riza sorts the contents into _Urgent_ and _Less-Urgent_.

“How was Alphonse?” Roy asks after a few token attempts to ignore the itch of his curiosity.

“He was in fine form,” Riza says. “He was so expansively eloquent that he managed to speak for hours without saying anything definitive, and Hakuro was too embarrassed to ask for clarifications lest he look like he’d failed to understand a teenager’s vocabulary.”

When Roy stops to think about it, Alphonse Elric is terrifying. Accordingly, he tries to think about it as infrequently as possible.

“How was Edward?” Riza asks in the calmest of her thousand voices.

“Magnificent,” Roy says, and signs off on a report.

 

* * *

 

Riza heads home at eight-thirty. There’s a brisk knock on the door a little after ten. Before Roy can call out to grant entrance, the door’s pushed open, and Ed peers in.

Roy doesn’t think he will ever stop being stunned and speechlessly grateful. It was the little things, in the end, that were unbearable: it was praying that the precise shade of golden-yellow would never fade; it was forgetting the exact arch of his eyebrow; it was not hearing the thump of his boots in the hall. It was not finding blond hairs on the office couch; it was never skimming newspaper articles about unexplained explosions suspiciously close to the assignments; it was the end of laughter, of banter, of light. It was the blackout, which made Roy seek the whiteout, which only made the stifled hopes take cruel shape against the unrelenting snow.

“Jesus,” Ed says. “Don’t you ever sleep?”

“When it can’t be avoided,” Roy says, tipping his mouth into a smirk that feels extremely artificial nowadays.

Ed smiles thinly back. “You want a drink?”

“Desperately,” Roy says.

 

* * *

 

Ed insists, and Roy knows that the Fullmetal Alchemist’s bank account is still teeming with old paychecks and four years’ accumulated interest, so Roy lets him buy the first round.

“You think they’re gonna need to hear more bullshit?” Ed asks, and the beer foam clings to his upper lip, and glimpses like this are lightning in Roy’s heart—stabbing, twisting, and then the _thunder_.

He sips serenely from his own glass. “That’s difficult to predict at this juncture.”

Ed rolls his eyes. “You could just say ‘Fucked if I know’ like a normal person.”

“I should hate to be mistaken for normal,” Roy says.

Ed scowls, and it makes him look so _young_ again. “Yeah, well, at least I’ll never mistake you for nice.”

“I’m extremely nice,” Roy says. “I might very well be the nicest person I know.”

“Oh, boy,” Ed says, sitting back, beer in hand, right leg swinging up to settle over his left knee, with a brightly-gleaming grin. “Here we go.”

“You don’t think I’m _nice_?” Roy asks. It’s extraordinary, the rush of feelings—he’d forgotten just how tumultuous his insides are when Ed starts to stir them; disappointment and amusement and shame and a touch of cold terror. He masks it all in suave overconfidence, because he has no choice. “How dreadfully unperceptive.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Ed says cheerily. “I think you scrape your way into the category of basic human decency—just barely, by the way, and only because you’ve got all kinds of mitigating circumstances, and I believe in intentions—but you’re a _dick_ , all right?”

“I am not,” Roy says. Surely he’s not. Surely he can’t be. Surely the ferocity of his commitments _counts_ for something; surely he doesn’t have to sugarcoat every interaction with another person to prove something; surely he doesn’t have to mollycoddle people and their feelings to legitimize the fact that he _cares_ about them—

Ed rolls his shoulders and draws another grin from his endless arsenal. “It’s not necessarily a _bad_ thing. I mean, you kind of have to be a dick sometimes to get anything done.”

“How silly of me,” Roy says, “to have taken offense at what seemed to be name-calling when you were, in fact, obliquely complimenting my ambition.”

Ed’s eyes dance. They’re in a back corner, at a small table, and he’s close enough to touch; Roy’s whole body _burns_ for the pressure of his fingertips.

“Now you’re getting it,” Ed says. He raises his empty glass and then slides it swiftly across the tabletop—only Roy’s reflexes keep it from smashing on the floor, and the quickness of his rescuing hand makes Ed’s gaze spark. “Your turn this time.”

Roy takes both of their glasses and casts a deft look leftward into his blind spot before he stands. “As long as you promise not to exceed your limitations. You have a great deal less body mass for absorbing alcohol, after all.”

Ed’s delight is wicked, and his eyes are wide. “Fuck your shit, Mustang; I’m not too small to hold my liquor, and I’m gonna prove it.”

Roy thinks, as he dodges bodies en route to the bar, that Ed was right: there is nothing _nice_ about him. There is nothing _nice_ about the way he’s sorely tempted to befuddle Ed with drink and seize him when he’s suggestible. There is nothing _nice_ about the things he’d do, the marks he’d leave, the liberties he’d take. There is nothing _nice_ in how his blood beats, possessive, possessed. Passionate? Yes. Compassionate? Possibly. Nice? Not a chance in any of the hells he’s been to.

He passes bills across the counter and carries both glasses back without spilling a drop. Maybe he should have been a waiter all along. He always wondered. Given what ‘destiny’ means, you can’t actually miss yours, can you? You become who you have to be; when you arrive you realize that you’ve always been headed towards the place you ended up.

By that logic, they were always meant to converge here, weren’t they? Everything they have ever done, every word spoken, every muscle moved, has led them to this spot. And from the way Ed watches him as he approaches, Roy thinks—they’re teetering. They’re on the verge; the precipice is crumbling, and the next few moments will decide whether or not they fall.

Already he’s presuming that they’ll fall together. He should know better than that by now.

Ed asks about the developments in the government instead of offering a ‘thank you’ as he starts in heartily on the second drink. What he’s really asking is whether Roy has whipped the ruling powers into a marginally less-oppressive shape, but to his credit he pays close attention to the long and convoluted answer.

And they smile at each other, and it’s strange; Ed’s eyes rake up and down his face; Ed scrapes his chair closer, and their knees brush underneath the table. Ed’s voice lowers and lilts, and when Roy returns from fetching the third round, he touches Ed’s elbow as he offers the glass.

They were both scientists, once, and this cannot be a coincidence.

“Edward,” he says, slowly, baiting an animal that bites, “I don’t want to misconstrue your intentions.”

Those words will never be celebrated. That sacrifice will never get a parade. The fact that he has loved Ed so long that he breathes devotion and bleeds despair, and he has opened himself to rejection when he _finally_ has cause to hope—

Courage is a funny thing.

Roy Mustang is a sad little man.

“Look,” Ed says, watching his left-hand fingertips dragging wavy trails through the condensation on his glass, “I’m not gonna screw around, okay?  No damn games, or I’m done.  It’s… I could’ve had something, before, back in Germany—the place I was, on the other side.  I don’t know what exactly it would’ve been, but it would’ve been _something_ —except that I wasted it.  I don’t know if you think about it like this, but that’s… the ultimate crime, in science.  Not even trying is the worst thing you can do; not even finding out.  The result isn’t really that important—whether it goes down in flames or gets off the ground doesn’t matter as much as the fact that you _tried_ , and you got the data, and now you _know_.”

Roy raises his folded hands and settles his mouth behind them. His heart is not beating so much as trembling rhythmically.  “Do you think that you and I would go down in flames?”

Ed smiles thinly and pops a lopsided shrug.  “Dunno,” he says.  “Maybe we’d go _up_ in flames.  That’s what I mean—the important part is finding _out_.  I’ve got another opportunity here, maybe, if you’re game, and I’m not gonna squander this one.”

“‘If I’m game’,” Roy says carefully.

Ed’s eyes narrow. He swills his beer, takes a sip, and licks his lips. “That’s what I said.”

“I thought you didn’t want games,” Roy says.

One eyebrow arches. “I thought you didn’t want me to call you a dick.” Ed’s face goes shuttered; his eyes darken; he pushes his chair back, plants his palms on the tabletop, and stands. “Well—” His voice is cool and clipped, and it sounds _wrong_. “—guess that answers the question.”

What? No. No, no, no, no—

Roy grabs for Ed’s forearm, misses, and recoils—it’s his fucking _depth_ perception; it’s his fucking _eye_. He clutches his clumsy hand to his chest and tries not to blame that fucking patch for everything, but it _is_ an inescapable emblem of the moment where everything went awry—

Ed hesitates, half-turned away.

Roy clears his throat and fights the urge to cower, to cave, to hide and lick his wounds as he has always done. “I was asking for clarification,” he says. “I wouldn’t joke about—that.”

Ed barely moves—barely swivels—but it brings him closer. He draws three shallow breaths in succession, and then he says, “Fine. I’ll make this real simple. Do you want me?”

“Yes,” Roy says, and it is too small a word to hold the infinity of hurt and rapture that it means. “I… have wanted you a very long time.”

Ed’s smile is gradual and shy. “No shit?”

“None,” Roy says.

The next smile’s bigger, and it makes Roy’s stomach flip.

 

* * *

 

Several drinks later, they stagger all the way to Roy’s townhouse and finally crash together on the porch—Roy has time to think blearily that it’s a miracle they’ve made it up the steps, and then Ed’s fingers are fisted in his hair, and they’re joined at the mouth and moaning.

It should have been more than this. It should have been glorious and grandiose, a culmination of all of the longing vigils, an apology for all of the wasted grief. It should have been elegant and poetic and chaste.

It’s not. It’s sloppy, wet, and more than a little bit filthy. And Roy loves that Ed is never what he _should_ be.

Ed pauses for breath and starts dragging at the catches of Roy’s uniform— _here_ , outside, in public, on the _porch_.

“Nonono,” Roy says, fumbling for Ed’s wrists. With thumb and index finger he can circle them; the automail is remarkably cold. He holds Ed’s hands back, out of range; Ed wriggles his fingers and looks slightly confused. “It’d be tawdry,” Roy says. “And we’re drunk.”

“Speak for yourself, bastard,” Ed says, beaming. He’s a thing of wonder in the moonlight.

“I’ll call you a taxi,” Roy says.

“ _Lame_ ,” Ed says. He breaks Roy’s grip, reaches for Roy’s collar, and slips warm fingertips underneath it. “Lemme just stay here.”

“Alphonse would be furious with me,” Roy says.

Ed’s thin smile wobbles in the silver light. “Al won’t care.”

The keys jingle far too loudly as Roy shies back and fishes them from the depths of his pocket; they jump and shudder in his hand as he tries to fit them into the lock.  “No?”

When the door gives at last, he swings it open wide and holds it—but Ed presses up against his chest and slides past him _slowly_ , both eyes locked onto his lonely one the whole way in.

“Nope,” Ed says, toeing off his boots—his new boots, his different boots; they’re lower-heeled and lace up around grommets, and it’s a marvel he can kick them off—and casting a slightly hazy assessing look around himself.  “He’s got a theory, actually.  Real scientific.”

Roy closes the door, bolts it, and stares at his hand.  He just locked himself inside his own home with tiger-eyed temptation.

“What theory is that?” he asks, standing up as straight as he can manage.

Ed’s ponytail snaps like a pennant as he turns again, and a smile darts elusively in the cuts of light and shadow on his face.  “Al,” he says, “thinks I’m sweet on you.”  He swaggers over—those _hips_ — “Al,” he says, “swears that when we were on the other side, he saw something of _you_ —” Ed splays his left hand on Roy’s chest, pushing him back against the door; he stands on his toes to whisper into Roy’s ear, and his moist breath sends ripples of goosebumps down Roy’s leaden arms.  “—in every guy I fucked.  Something different in every one.  So Al’s got a theory…” His fingers walk languidly up Roy’s chest and curl into his collar.  “…that I was trying to put all the pieces together in my head, because what I really wanted all along was _you_.”

Roy’s whole body is humming; his skin’s aflame; his heart slams out a frantic tattoo.  “Do you think that’s—do you think his theory’s viable?”

“I dunno,” Ed murmurs, damp lips dragging down Roy’s throat.  “Maybe we should run some tests.”

“Maybe,” Roy says, lifting a tingling hand to touch Ed’s hair—oh, _God_ , it’s like silk; it’s like mercury; “I should—call you a cab—”

“Christ on a cracker,” Ed says, drawing back enough for a skeptical look—and he must be _very_ drunk to spout that caliber of gibberish, mustn’t he?  “I didn’t figure it was gonna be _nearly_ this tough to get into your pants.”

“I didn’t imagine you would be so enthusiastic about the prospect,” Roy says. In all honesty, of course, the word _fantasize_ would have been more accurate than _imagine_.

Ed’s mouth twists into another strange and intriguingly enigmatic smile.  “Yeah, well, I was a dumbass kid last time I had a chance, or I would’ve asked then.”  He looks up through his eyelashes and tilts his hips in against Roy’s—so close, too close, _fuck_ —

He’s waited _too long_ to rush this and ruin it.  He can’t afford to lose control, whether or not— _especially because_ —Ed encapsulates everything that makes him weak.

“It’s been four years,” he says, lifting a slightly tremulous hand to slide his fingers through Ed’s bangs.  “We’re both different people than we were then.  Wouldn’t you at least like to get reacquainted before we tear each other’s clothes off?”

Ed blinks and tugs at Roy’s collar.  “Not particularly.”

That’s the bucket of cold water he needed.  He never should have been so fucking _stupid_ as to dream that this could actually work—that they could actually come together and not react like sodium and water.

The absent eye is aching.  He wanted to ask Ed about phantom limbs; he wanted to ask Ed about architecture in the other world; he wanted to ask Ed whether the lights in the northern sky made his spine clench and his heart swell.

He pries Ed’s hand from his shirt collar and gently pushes past.  He sheds his coat, hangs it from the hook, and crosses to the telephone.

“I’m not interested in a fling, Ed,” he says levelly as he pages through the phonebook.  “I’m sure virtually anyone you ask would be more than happy to have sex with you, but I am too old and too tired and too preoccupied to play around.”

“What?” Ed asks in a voice so small it’s almost unrecognizable.

Roy despises his hands for shaking as he lifts the receiver to his right ear. “Evidently I’m more… emotionally invested in this than you are, and in the interest of not sabotaging our working relationship, I think we should—stop.”

The dial tone sings at him, blares at him; he starts to lower the phone. Ed is entirely still, backlit by moonbeams, a faceless silhouette. A motionless Ed is unnatural, and that is cause for alarm.

“How can we stop?” Ed asks. His voice is low and _icy_ —frigid, brittle, sharp. The individual syllables fall like shards of glass to the hardwood of the hallway. “We haven’t fucking _started_. But I guess I wouldn’t want to _sabotage_ any fucking _relationships_ , so I’ll just see myself the fuck _out_.”

He turns smoothly on his right heel, jams his feet back into the boots, and Roy reaches for him like he’s a magnet, like it’s a compulsion—but too _slowly_ —

The door swings, and slams, and Roy wrenches it open again, but Ed’s striding down the walk with his shoulders hunched; the light of the streetlamp catches his hair. Roy takes two, three, four steps over the threshold, wanting to _run_ after him, but—

Well, what’s the point? They do what they have to; they are what they were slated to become. They were meant to touch like weather fronts, to smash and seethe and slip away again. This is the order of things. This is ordinary.

…this can’t possibly be right; if there is _any_ sort of God at all, this can’t possibly—

This is it, isn’t it? This is a fragmentary taste of what he deserves.

 

* * *

 

The bed is too damn big and too damn cold and too damn quiet with only his own heartbeat for company.

When will he learn that anything worth having is worth gambling on and fighting for?

He sweeps his arm across the empty expanses of unwrinkled sheet and then, hesitantly, trails his fingertips down over the pit of scars where a bright, enticing eye used to be.

 

* * *

 

He holds out admirably until lunchtime.  He hedges; he rationalizes; he invents novel and heretofore unimagined strategies of justification. It’s Ed’s fault.  It’s just the way of the world; entropy dissolves everything; connections break; plans fail; the simple weight of existence brings perfectly viable structures to the verge of collapse.  It’s for the best.

By twelve-thirty, Riza’s gaze has become so ponderous that he decides to do something just to get her to stop trying to figure out whether to punch him or pity him.  At a vigorous, certainly not desperate stride, he makes it to the barracks room assigned to the Elric brothers by fifteen minutes to one.

He tries, for a long and earnest moment, to interpret the stuttering of his heart—surely it’s some kind of code; surely there’s some kind of meaning.  Surely there’s some way that this can all be _easy_.  Fools fall in love all the time; how in the hell can he be doing it so _wrong_?

When no illuminating message is forthcoming, he lifts his hand and knocks.  The sound resonates right back through his hangover and drills into his brain.

The door opens a fraction, and Alphonse’s startlingly real gray-brown eyes appear in the crack.  They blink.  The gap widens slightly.

“Good afternoon, Brigadier General,” Alphonse says.

“Good afternoon,” Roy says, despite the fact that the afternoon is, of course, abysmal.  “Is Edward in?”

Alphonse pauses.  “In, yes.  Available… no.”

“Not for me,” Roy says.

Alphonse winces.

Roy closes his eye, draws a deep breath, looks at Alphonse again, and keeps his voice painstakingly steady.

“Please tell Edward,” he says, “that I apologize for jumping to the conclusion I did. I don’t believe either of us was especially rational given all we’d had to drink, and I realize now that I projected my own insecurities onto our conversation in a way that was inexcusably insulting to his character. I hope…” He swallows and wets his lips before he selects the words. “I know he understands that being afraid of _getting_ something that you want doesn’t necessarily mean you want it any less. I hope that he will consider the possibility that I feel like I’m betting my entire life on my ability to be _enough_ for him—to be enough for _Ed_ , who could have anyone and anything he wanted, to whom all I have to offer is a very ragged shadow of a man he hated once.”

Alphonse smiles faintly.

Roy hears a slight scuffling, and then a sliver of bright yellow hair appears over Alphonse’s shoulder—quickly followed by bright yellow bangs, which in turn are succeeded by bright yellow eyes.

“You’re full of shit,” Ed says guardedly.

“I assure you,” Roy says, “I am not.”

The sharp eyes narrow to pale slits.  “That’s the way you talk in front of other generals.  _Real_ convincing.”

“Brother,” Alphonse says, looking less than delighted to be trapped between the two of them.

“It’s the way I talk when I take something very seriously,” Roy says.  All of the deep breaths in the history of mankind’s lungs would be inadequate to prepare him for what he knows he has to say next.  “It’s been a _long_ time, Ed.  For me, it has been a long time spent mourning, and assuming, and second-guessing, and pining, and wishing, and… I’ve developed so many scenarios in my head that actually _living_ the chance to be with you seems like it must be another incarnation of a familiar dream. It’s—I’m not… good… at fielding situations that hinge on _personal_ expectations.”

Ed’s eyes flick up to where the patch fails to hide the creases on Roy’s forehead, and then down to where the fingers of both of his hands have curled into fists at his sides.

“Still don’t buy it,” he says.

“Oh, for heaven’s _sake_ ,” Alphonse says before Roy can give up hope forever. “The two of you had a misunderstanding while you were drunk off your asses, and despite the fact that I’m _sure_ , Brother, that you conducted yourself abominably, he’s come here with the grace and humility to _apologize_. Ed, do me this _one_ favor: swallow your pride and let something wonderful happen to you for once.”

Ed’s eyes go wide and round, and he opens his mouth indignantly.

“General,” Alphonse says, “Brother is terrified of commitment, because it always ends in disappointment and tears—and very often blood, in his case. And he’s so accustomed to pushing people away that it scares him that he’s cared about you _consistently_ for so long. So you’re going to have to be very brave and very patient, but if you can do that, he’ll love you so intensely you’ll forget you were ever alone.”

Ed shuts his mouth.

Roy listens to the erratic rhythm of his heart in his ears and attempts to determine whether or not he has stopped breathing.

Alphonse wrinkles his nose.

“You’re both hopeless,” he says. “Go out somewhere tonight, and _don’t_ drink, would you? Talk about the Northern Lights and about alchemy and about how things have changed—but none of the important things; those are all the same. And then go kiss in some quiet place, and make all kinds of promises, and realize later that you’ve never meant them before.”

The silence is so heavy that the weight may well crush them all.

“How the hell,” Ed says slowly to his brother, “did you get so _diabolical_?”

“‘Diabolical’ is a bit harsh,” Alphonse says pleasantly.  “General, you should probably get back to work.  Why don’t you collect Brother at the library whenever you’re finished for the evening, and the two of you can grab a bite to eat?”

“I’m afraid I have to side with Edward,” Roy says.  “‘Diabolical’ is quite fair.”

Ed grins tentatively, and Alphonse rolls his eyes.

“Hopeless,” the younger Elric says.  “I don’t know why I bother.  Give everyone in the office my best, General.”

“Promise me one thing,” Roy says.

Alphonse raises his eyebrows.

“Don’t compete with me for governmental power,” Roy says.  “I fear you’d win.”

Alphonse’s grin is terrifying.

 

* * *

 

Ed is knee-weakeningly beautiful when he’s engrossed in a book.  His hair hangs around his face, gleaming as it filters the last of the light; his eyes skim back and forth across the text; a sliver of a groove between his brows is the only hallmark of his absolute concentration.

Roy could watch him for hours when he’s like this—and might do, if he wasn’t so hungry.

He touches Ed’s left shoulder, and the golden head snaps up.  It takes Ed’s gaze a moment to focus on him.

“S’up,” Ed says.  “Is it dinnertime already?”

“That depends,” Roy says. “Are you hungry?”

Ed grins wolfishly. “Is rain wet?”

“Unless the universe has very recently undergone a drastic reconstr—”

“Does it make you useless?”

“I suppose I had better not order any water,” Roy says, fighting the urge to grit his teeth. “We’ll just have to drink wine.”

Ed claps the book shut and jams it into an overflowing satchel bag, which he slings over his metal shoulder. “Yeah, no way _that_ can go wrong.”

He starts off towards the exit, stride uneven from the weight of the books. Roy follows without comment until the third time Ed hikes the strap upward.

He clears his throat tactfully. “Is that a bit too heavy for y—”

“Fuck off,” Ed says. “I’ve got a _lot_ of reading to catch up on, okay? Four years of alchemical progress. Even if most of it’s boring or crap or wrong—which most of it is—I still need to know what’s getting talked about.” Suddenly, the scowl drops from his face, and he flashes Roy a grin like a small supernova. “God, it’s _awesome_ , though—alchemy, getting to do alchemy, getting to talk about it and think about it and use it and… It’s like if you were mute for four years, or bli…” His gaze fixates on the eyepatch. He stumbles, and then he swallows. “…oh. I mean—I didn’t mean—”

“Edward,” Roy says, “I paid a price. Whether or not it was equivalent isn’t for me to decide, but I wouldn’t act differently if I had the choice again. I’m not bitter, and I’m not offended.”

Ed smiles. Roy smiles back. Most of it’s even true.

 

* * *

 

Their table nestles against the back wall of the restaurant, near a window that radiates with the cold. There’s a candle on the tabletop, and the flame flirts with the pale lily in the narrow vase beside it. When Roy sees Ed glance at it and then at him, he can’t resist the urge to toy with it—just a little. Just enough to singe the arching ends of the petals.

They laugh. They laugh more than Roy ever expected; more than he remembered he could—they laugh in amusement; they laugh sardonically; they laugh in solidarity; they laugh out of giddiness and sheer relief. They’re circling each other, wary still because they’ve both been let down and shot down and shut down so many times before. In the shared laughter, though, they can sidle closer without having to commit. They can weave this slow, cautious, mutual understanding one spindly thread at a time. It’s warmer underneath the spreading tapestry. The world seems kinder from under here.

There’s a strange commonality to it—an overlap of experience that’s surprising and bizarre. They’ve both exiled themselves, voluntarily, to the furthest reaches they could find; they’ve both hunkered down and stared head-on at the reality of human beings at war, and they’ve both acknowledged that it’s impossible to face that and stay sane. They’ve both stopped pretending to understand the universe; they’ve both stopped pretending that their souls aren’t cracked and seething like infected wounds.

In the span of three hours, Roy discovers that it is wonderful to be able to look into Ed’s eyes and see clearly that all is not well in his heart—and to see that he doesn’t expect Roy to feign contentment. So much of civility is _lies_ ; “I’m fine”, “No trouble”, “You’re welcome”; to sit across from Edward Elric is to be _real_ , to be _honest_ , and to be _accepted_. Roy will never ask to be absolved, but _acceptance_ —

He’s been in love with a figment for years now; he’d prepared himself for the actualization to fall short.

Ed has always taken a very pure sort of joy in gutting his preconceptions.

 

* * *

 

They step out into the brisk night, and Roy tastes reluctance like licorice on the back of his tongue as he makes his mouth form the words: “Let me walk you home.”

It’s not even about sex—isn’t that absurd? It’s not about anything in particular; he simply does not want to lose Ed’s presence. He doesn’t want the companionship to disappear; he doesn’t want this prickling, unusual warmth to fade out into solitude and silence; he doesn’t want the night to end. He doesn’t want to let go of the careful steel hand he hasn’t even taken yet.

Ed’s smile twists wryly. “The barracks aren’t home. If you’re talking conceptually, then this world’s enough, and there’s not a whole lot of walking to do. And by the fact that you’ve got your gentleman face on, you prob’ly don’t mean _your_ home, do you?”

Roy’s heart seems to be in every square centimeter of his body, beating light and fast. “I don’t want either of us to feel later that we were… hasty. And I swear to you it’s a matter of respect.”

Ed pushes his hands into his pockets and rocks back on his heels.

“That’s fine,” he says.  “I just… I mean, to me, it’s never really _real_ until it’s… physical.  Words are just sounds you make with your mouth, y’know?  They don’t prove anything.  It’s actions, for me.  It’s the way somebody… touches—not what they say.  And I get that not everybody’s like that, and that’s fine—it’s fine.  I know a lot of people see it the other way around; they want to feel like they know what’s going on in the other person’s head first.  And you’re all about minds and mindgames and whatever, so it makes sense that you’d be that way, and I can deal with that.  Just… for me it won’t be the same unti—”

Roy cups his face in both hands and kisses him, hard.

They’re standing in the middle of the sidewalk in the city where he lives and works and is held accountable for his actions, and he _cannot_ care. He’s twining the fingers of one hand into Ed’s hair and settling the other against the curve of the boy’s neck; Ed’s pulse flutters against his skin, and his stomach _melts_ —

Ed makes a soft sound into his mouth, and there is nothing— _nothing_ —left to want in a human life. There is nothing more perfect than—

Ed fists a hand in the braiding of Roy’s uniform and pries their mouths apart. He pants a little, and his eyes search Roy’s face. The patch always feels heavier when people look at him intently; their attention gives it gravity.

“You sure about this?” Ed says, grip tightening. “Just—I mean, you have a reputation. And I get that; I get that it’s important. I don’t want to fuck that up. I don’t want to jeopardize your Führership ascendancy plan or whatever the hell it is.”

“I’m already considered unorthodox and possibly unhinged after my time in the North,” Roy says delicately. “In the long run, I imagine that tacit approval of my governmental aspirations from a recently-recovered and recently-retired Fullmetal Alchemist can only help my case. I’m sure most dissenters can be persuaded that discreet homosexual relations are the sort of indiscretion that can be overlooked.”

Ed stares at him. Then Ed frowns.

“I’m sorry,” Roy says. An apology seems like the safest option despite not being entirely certain what he’s done.

“Yeah,” Ed says, cagey again. “You were supposed to say, like, ‘Oh, it’s probably dangerous, but being with you makes me forget the risk’ or some shit.” He wrinkles his nose adorably. “No, wait, that’s totally what a chick would want you to say, isn’t it? Fuck it. I don’t care. Use it like that if you want, I guess. I should’ve figured you already would have factored it all in.”

“I hadn’t,” Roy says. “It didn’t even occur to me that I could want something as _madly_ as I want you. Which is completely absurd given how much time I spent pining after the abstract concept of what we could have had.”

Ed’s eyes go very wide, and his fingers curl even closer into the front of Roy’s uniform.

“Don’t say shit like that,” he says. “Don’t—I mean, we’re both jumping into this with no idea how far it goes, right? No assumptions, no demands, no conditions, right? You shouldn’t—don’t talk like—”

“I’m tired of hiding,” Roy says. “I’m tired of stifling things, and biting back words that other people might find disagreeable, and trying to make myself _feel_ less.” For all that, of course, he hesitates; he _is_ a strategist. “What I feel with you is—uncontainable. Trying to hold it in is exhausting, and in any case there doesn’t seem to be much of a point. You understand what it’s like to feel too much. You know what it means to give up everything. And you will not think that I am weak for _wanting_ things.”

Ed finally releases the fabric of the uniform, freeing his hand to scrub down his face. “You gotta stop doing this to me, you fucking _bastard_.”

“I’m sorry,” Roy says again. He pauses. “Doing wh—”

“Talking like that,” Ed says, stepping back and hunching his shoulders high. “It fucks with my head when you get all—confessiony.”

“I’m… sorry?” Roy attempts.

Ed rubs at one eye with the heel of his left hand, gesturing unrevealingly with the right. “No, just—I mean, you keep saying you don’t want to rush into this, and you don’t want it to be a big deal, and _whatever_ , and then—but then you’re always talking about how, for you, _emotionally_ , it already is. And I don’t… I don’t _do_ promises, okay? I do _proof_.”

They will always be at odds; they will always be battering at one another’s weakness; they will always collide so violently that the bruises bloom violet.

And it will always be worth the marks.

“How do I prove it?” Roy asks. “Tell me what to do, and it’s done.”

Ed looks at him critically for a long moment and then offers up a bright-eyed, narrow smile.

“You can start,” he says, catching Roy’s elbow to draw him down and touch damp lips to the shell of his ear, “by fucking me senseless.”

Roy swallows and then swallows again.

“Let me walk you,” he says, “to _my_ home.”

Ed’s grin might eviscerate a lesser mortal. “That’s more like it.”

 

* * *

 

It’s a blink-of-an-eye eternity before they’re back on the fateful doorstep. Operating his key is much easier this time; his head is clear, his sight is sharp, and his fingers are actually responding.

Ed breezes past him the moment the door is open. Roy steps inside, bolts it, and has time to draw half a breath before he finds himself pushed back against the doorframe by Ed’s body pressed to his.

“Oh,” he says.

Ed’s hot breath ghosts up his throat and along his jaw. “Yeah,” Ed says.

It’s fascinating—being seduced by Edward Elric. He was an arresting child and a beautiful adolescent, but only now that he is a stunning young man has he realized the power in appearances. This is part of what Roy was always scared of, isn’t it? If Ed knows what he has, what he is, what he’s capable of, what’s available to him—he won’t settle. He won’t compromise. And he might not choose Roy Mustang, in the end. He must know now that he can have better: he can have anyone he wants.

To think that wanton arrogance in romantic dalliances used to be _Roy’s_ lot.

“So,” Ed says, too warm and moving with that slow, graceful, feline sensuality; “there are a couple ways this could go.”

“No,” Roy says. “Just one.”

The cat-bright eyes are eager and curious as they fix on his face, and Ed licks his lips.

The howl he releases when Roy ducks smoothly and hefts him over one shoulder, however, is much more of a canine sound.

He squirms like an eel but—rather tellingly—carefully avoids putting any metal appendages through Roy’s face. “You _bastard_! Let me _down_!”

“Not a chance,” Roy says, tightening the grip of the arm encircling Ed’s waist and lifting the other hand to grip the back of the boy’s extremely appetizing thigh.

“Oh,” Ed says, slightly breathlessly. “I— _unhand me_ , you fucking _cad_!”

Roy smoothes his hand up over the absolutely rapturous curve of Ed’s ass and massages at the sharp hipbone with the pad of his thumb. “I don’t believe I shall.”

“Nnh— _fucker_!”

It has been so long, too long, too many years, and Roy’s back will begrudge him tomorrow, but for tonight—tonight everything in him, every muscle and tendon and fragment of flesh, wants _Ed_. Everything in him has rallied to the all-consuming cause, and the pain can wait for morning.

Ed is growling in the back of his throat as they top the stairs; there’s a petulant kick of the booted feet, but it’s not intended to injure.

“Now, now,” Roy says, and then he fulfills an extremely longstanding dream and squeezes Ed’s gorgeous ass.

Ed _squeaks_.

Roy could cry with contentment, but there simply isn’t time.

He knees the door of his bedroom open, attempts to prompt more of Ed’s impatient wriggling as he crosses the floor, and tosses the boy down on the bed. Just the splay of gold hair on white sheets and the careless spread of limbs is enough to make Roy’s guts tremble, and then that _grin_ —

Roy pins him to the bed and kisses him and kisses him deeper; Ed’s fingers twist themselves into his hair and drag him in; Ed’s right leg hooks around the small of his back.

“Always fuckin’ knew,” Ed mumbles into Roy’s mouth. Roy, drawing back, breathing lightly, scrabbling for the tiny buttons of the waistcoat with his unsteady fingers, makes a faint noise of inquiry. “That you’d—” Ed’s sigh roughens into a groan, and he arches his back off the mattress as the waistcoat falls open, and a fairly considerable part of Roy’s brain explodes. “—be—amazing. In the sack.”

“‘The sack’,” Roy says to the soft skin of Ed’s throat, to the pulse racing beneath it. “You come back with a thousand new profanities, and you have nothing better to say of my sexual prowess than ‘amazing in the sack’—”

Ed laughs, brightly, and shoves at him, only then to fist a gentle hand in his hair and reel him back in.

Roy kisses him feverishly but unbuttons his shirt slowly, savoring it. He dreamed endlessly, shamelessly, fearlessly; no one could deny him the privilege of fantasy, but this—to _have_ , to _touch_ , to _taste_ —Ed has always has a knack for defying expectation. Ed has always had a penchant for leaving him kindled and speechless.

Ed is making a positively pornographic noise as his hips rise off of the bed to fit themselves neatly into Roy’s hands.

“Jesus,” he says, voice rising into a moan.  “General, fuck—just—do me a favor—”

“Anything,” Roy says, and to offer that truthfully is terrifying.  If Ed asked for his life, his world, his head on a platter; if Ed asked for a dozen heroes’ trials; if Ed asked for a crescent moon and his choice of constellations—Roy would die striving.

“Roy,” Ed says, lips curling at the corners, “strip me naked and make me yours.”

With a pounding heart and burning hands, with the universe in harmony with the sing of hot blood through his veins, with cold fingers curled against his scalp and Ed’s spine arching and Roy’s throat rough and his lungs straining—he does.

It’s startling, some sentient part of his spinning but sated brain thinks, that Ed has become an outstanding lover.  Ed—who used to blush hotly from collarbones to forehead when Havoc started rambling about cup sizes and the sexiest color of lace—just jimmied his hips with such unbelievably impeccable timing that Roy slammed into the abyss and came _violently_ , with a a full-voiced shout and a shudder that probably tweaked a muscle.

With characteristic heart-stopping verve, Ed _laughs_ his way through orgasm, gasps in a ragged breath, and drops to the mattress beaming broadly.  Roy wants so _badly_ to touch him, to hold him, to cradle him, to stroke the damp hair back from his forehead, to lick the sweat from the hollow of his throat and trace the lines of cold metal and warm flesh—but if starts touching, he’ll start clinging, and he’ll never let go.  And that’s not fair, is it?  That’s not equivalent.

Ed stretches his beautiful back and twists his beautiful hips and curls his beautiful toes, and then he settles, looking like a very well-fed—and rather ruffled—cat.  Roy lies down beside him, at a distance that would be safe with anyone who wasn’t so mind-bogglingly unpredictable as Ed.

Ed closes his eyes and hums softly for a moment, and then he rolls onto his side and pops up onto his metal elbow, eyes fixed on Roy’s face.  He reaches out with his left hand and tugs on the bottom of the patch.

“You’ve gotta take this off next time,” he says.

_Next time._

“If you like,” Roy says, which sounds slightly less obsessive than _Anything you ask for_.

Ed’s soft thumb runs along the edge of the fabric, and his fingertips dapple against Roy’s jaw.  He clears his throat and asks, rather gently, “Can I see?”

_Anything but that._

Roy draws a deep breath and forces a smile.  “If you like.”

Evidently he likes.

Edward has grown in more ways than one; there’s no sharp intake of breath, no grimace, no change at all in his expression but for a faint furrowing of his forehead and a flicker in his eyes.

“That’s not so bad,” he says.  “Sucks about your eye, though.  You’ve got damn sexy eyes.”

“Damn sexy eye, now,” Roy says.

Ed grins at that.  “You’re good enough to make one do the work of two.”

Roy smiles, sincerely, even though the abomination spread across his face feels even vaster and more grotesque when it’s exposed—when it’s exposed to _Ed_.  Ed, in all of his brazen, effortless glory, makes the scar tissue a vital part of his perfectly mismatched form.  On Roy Mustang, it’s a badge of failure.

Ed’s hand trails down to Roy’s shoulder and kneads at one of the innumerable tense spots.  “Hey,” he says.  “You know that theory of Al’s I was talking about?”

Roy nods instead of announcing that his mind has dwelt on little else.

Ed’s fingers flirt with his neck and then his ear, and Ed’s gaze watches their progress intently.  “So I was thinking it over,” the boy says, “and… I mean, I wasn’t _planning_ it, but…” The laugh is so self-deprecating it verges on nervousness, which is incongruous with Ed.  “Shit, Mustang, it’s just so fucking _Freudian_.”  He draws his hand back to run it down his own face and then looks Roy in the eye, cheeks darkening to a rather charming shade of pink. “I mean, I… all of ’em were older. All of ’em were smartasses who could work a room and—well, fuck, if they didn’t make me fucking _quiver_ , they weren’t good enough. Lots of bars, lots of little cabarets. Couple backalleys. And then I… you gotta promise not to laugh.”

“I won’t,” Roy says. He doesn’t think he’s capable; he’s thinking about _Ed_ and _alley walls_ , about hoarse whispers and surreptitious hands, about chipped brick and pungent smoke and music floating out a cracked door—about mouths sealing tight together and blood quickening to a tempo that doesn’t match the jazz—

“I slept with—” Ed worries at his lip and sizes Roy up again, as though he’s changed in the last four seconds, as though he wouldn’t take anything he’s given now. “—with—officers. Military officers. And despite it being the worst idea _ever_ , I tried three of ’em.”

“Three,” Roy says faintly.

“One’s a data point,” Ed says, “two’s a pattern, and three’s enough to draw logical conclusions.” Ed’s fingertips tap their way down Roy’s breastbone. “Anyway, tall and dark are easy, but handsome is the kicker.  Especially handsome like _you_ , ’cause… you’re…” He gestures unhelpfully to Roy’s face. “Y’know.”

“Mangled and of mixed descent?” Roy supplies.

“Rare,” Ed says.  “What you are is rare.”

Roy blinks. The measuredly amused _Jaded, broken, and brooding?_ he meant to suggest next gets stuck in his throat.

“There was this one guy,” Ed says, “in Amsterdam—the one guy I picked who wasn’t a bastard. I guess I subconsciously focused on the bastard part too much. Or maybe underneath it all, I wanted to get shoved around, ’cause I thought I deserved it.”

Roy’s muscles tense; his heart skitters. “What? Of course not, of course you don’t _des_ —”

Ed’s finger presses against his lips. He wants to lick it, but instead he obediently shuts his mouth.

“Anyway,” Ed says, “the guy in Amsterdam was blind. He got sick when he was a kid, and it fucked up his eyes. He said the last thing he remembered seeing was the kitten his parents had given him to try to make him feel better—this little tiny gray cat sitting on the windowsill. And he said that wasn’t such a bad image to be holding in his mind forever, was it? And he still had the cat. Al loved him for that. And I loved him because he didn’t take _anything_ for granted.”

“Ed,” Roy says against the soft contours of the boy’s hand.

“Shut up another second,” Ed says. “That’s the thing, though, about Al’s theory—little shit’s always right about everything, and he was right about you, too. You’re a hell of a lot more than the sum of the personality traits that stuck with me. And I think—” His thumb drifts up to Roy’s cheekbone, dragging gently across the tangled web of scars. “—I mean, if you want to, I’d… really like to find out what you add up to.”

“There is nothing,” Roy says, “that I want more.”

Ed grins, tangling his fingers in Roy’s hair. “Good.” He wriggles in closer, dragging the nest of bedclothes with him. “That’s enough goddamn philosophy for one night. Can we do some serious fucking cuddling?”

“Yes,” Roy says. “Cuddling is an extremely grave matter, and I treat it accordingly.”

Ed nestles in against his chest, and Roy wraps both arms around him and wonders how he’ll ever find the strength to let go.

“I’m glad you know the important shit,” Ed says.

Roy breathes in the scent of him rising from his hair. “As am I.”

 

* * *

 

As the night wears on, following some _very_ solemn snuggling, Roy deems that a post-coital soak in the bathtub would hit the spot.  Ed, none too surprisingly, is more interested in a post-coital bowl of ice cream.

“Gotta raise my blood sugar,” he says, licking the spoon in a way that is raising an entirely different part of Roy.

The thing that’s strange, though, is how strange it _isn’t_ —how calm and warm and normal it feels to sink into the hot water while Ed, dressed in an oversized bathrobe and holding the spoon in his mouth, plunks down on the end table in lieu of a stool.

“Y’know,” Ed says around the utensil Roy currently envies, “you never really answered my question about the lights.  I mean, you were in interrogation mode, so I didn’t expect you to, but… it was the lights that made me think I could do it, y’know?  Schlep our asses back here.  Play Russian roulette with the Gate again, even though this time I had a hell of a lot on the line.”

Roy folds his arms on the edge of the tub and sets his chin on them, watching Ed suck on the edge of the spoon for a moment before delving it back into the bowl.  “The ones here are… extraordinary.  We could go and see them sometime, if you like.”

“Nah,” Ed says.  “I practically lived, slept, ate, and breathed that fucking atmospheric phenomenon.  And some less-rational part of me’s scared they’d suck me back through.  On the other side they call ’em _aurora borealis_ , which is sort of a mishmash—it’s this one culture’s goddess of dawn and then this previous culture’s god of the north wind.  So I thought… y’know.  Maybe it’s a wind that’ll carry me into a new day, right?  Jesus, I don’t know; it’s so fucking cold up there that you think all kinds of things.  Anyway, we went way up into the mountains to try to get the best idea we could of what we were getting into, and what the chemical composition was, and what kind of array we could use—and that first night, the whole damn thing was _red_.  Like a wall of flame.  And I thought ‘This is it.  This is our chance, and we’re gonna make it.’”

Roy can’t stop himself from smiling when Ed’s eyes burn like that.  “And you did.”

Ed shrugs, nibbles on the spoon again, and looks at Roy with a thoughtful half-smile.  “You said you saw ’em, though, right?  So you know what I mean?”

“I saw them,” Roy says.  “Green like the southern hills in summer, glowing bright enough that I didn’t need both eyes.  It lit up the snow, too; it was everywhere, everything.  Absolute silence, and the sky torn through with light.  It was a little easier to make my peace with the world when I was a part of _that_.”

Ed grins, swings his feet, and reaches over to feed Roy a spoonful of ice cream.

A man could really get used to this.

 

* * *

 

The office, of course, can be put off but not denied.  He leaves a mumbling, tousle-headed Edward Elric half-buried in his rumpled sheets; his heart tightens, but he doesn’t hesitate to leave a front-door key on the nightstand.

 

* * *

 

“Ah,” Riza says.

Roy looks up from the day’s first report. Riza is not prone to needless interjections; is she ill?

She’s… smiling. Oh, God, she’s on her deathbed, and he didn’t even _know_ —

“I’m happy for you, sir,” Riza says, setting a few more folders atop one of the carefully cultivated piles. “You know what they say about good things.”

“They come in threes?” Roy asks slowly. A third Elric might not be such a bad—oh, who is he kidding; both universes would explode.

“They come to those who wait,” Riza says. She pauses, and the smile darts around her mouth again. “Additionally, they come in small packages.”

Roy points the pen at her. “I’m going to use that.”

“Your funeral, sir,” Riza says.

 

* * *

 

Four minutes after noon, the desk phone rings.  Roy lets it sing out twice before he raises it to his right ear.  “Mustang.”

“Edward Elric for you, General.”

Roy’s skin tingles.  What extraordinary power there is in a name.  “Put him through.”

“Yes, sir.”  The line buzzes and then hums.

“S’up,” Ed says.  “This is your lunch hour, right?  I’m not interrupting anything Major Hawkeye’ll shoot me for?”

“Certainly not,” Roy says, not that he wouldn’t lie to say it if he had to.

“Cool,” Ed says.  “I just wanted to… y’know.  See how you were.”

“I’m well,” Roy says.  “I’m—better than well, honestly.  You?”

“I raided your kitchen before I left,” Ed says, “so I’m good.”

Roy pauses.  “Where are you now?”

“Library,” Ed says, as Roy should have known.  “They’re on their lunch break, too.  Al’s so deep in this book about light arrays that he prob’ly won’t surface for another hour.  Is, uh—is the office empty?”

Roy tilts his chair to peer around the door and then settles back into it.  He covers the mouthpiece, clears his throat, and then lowers his voice to a purr.  “It’s very quiet in here.”

Ed swallows audibly, and Roy can hear the curl of a sly grin.  “No kidding.”

“Oh,” Roy says slowly, “on my _honor_. It’s just me here—in a uniform that’s getting rather a bit too warm.”  He leans back until the chair creaks, lets his eye slide halfway shut, and wages a doomed battle against a smirk.  “Which begs the question, Edward—what are _you_ wearing?”


End file.
